Water (2005): nation-building and widows’ Ssatus in postcolonial India

Abstract

[eng] Films as part of the popular culture have a huge influence in shaping the world we live in and, in addition, they help us understand our societies. In this sense, Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta has produced a number of films which have been considered indispensable to understand India as the world power that it is today. Her feminist critical approach to the construction of India as a modern nation in what is known as the Elements Trilogy (Fire, 1996; Earth 1999; and Water 2005) has gathered her harsh criticism from conservative cultural and political positions. In this dissertation, I will focus on the film Water (2015) by Deepa Mehta becomes the main source of analysis. This paper exposes the process of nation-building in India that took place way before the nation obtained its independence from the British Empire (1947) after Gandhi’s non-violent independence movement. Apart from that, this paper wants to raise awareness to the long-standing tradition of the widow’s marginalized situation in the nation. Settled time before the independence was achieved, with the independence movement appealing the Indian population, the characters of the widows living in the ashram with little Chuyia, Narayan – born into an affluent family and given a Western education –, and the symbolism hidden in the film are the key to develop and understand the theoretical concepts of this paper. All the characters are important in depicting how the nation-building process started and was developed in India, as well as the position of the minorities in the ex-colony.